179. What is the cost of a PC file server?
Please note! BMC-IT has a PC storage solution service. Read more in the SOP - Common service PC file server. Also note that for home directories we recommend using the IT-division HNAS file server.
These are examples of the costs of buying and maintaining a PC file server. The example below includes a server from Supermicro and one from HP. HP includes on-site support, Supermicro do not. Please note that TSM-backup is not included in these figures! (Prices updated in September 2016.)
- Very cheap Good for lots of data when the price has to be low.
- Acceptable speed Good bandwidth - can receive and send 1 Gbit/s (or 10 Gbit/s with appropriate network and multiple clients). Since the drives are rotating HDD, relative SSD the latency is high and IOPS are lower. But it works fine with large files.
- Low availability BMC-IT in general only do support during office hours. If the PC server totally breaks down (it may happen!) it will take some time to get service or spare parts or restoring from backups. Compare this with the IT-division HNAS file server which has built in redundancy.
- Linux and Active Directory These examples uses Linux (preferably CentOS 7) as an operating system and connects to the university Active Directory and works as a file server using Samba. More complex setups than this may need extra time to set up and maintain. For example running a Windows server instead of Linux requires extra costs for licenses.
This is a Supermicro file server with enterprise drives. Includes ship-in support from Southpole.
Normal HP file server with enterprise drives, three year next business day on-site support from HP.
This is a Supermicro file server with archive drices.
| Cost of a rack unit per year: 1250 (full rack) or 2000 (single machine) | SEK |
|
Number of rack units in the server room:
(If no new space is needed, set a 0 here) | U |
| Cost for the server with no drives: | SEK |
| The number of drives: | drives |
| Size of the drives: | TB |
|
Number of years to run the server
(warranty) | years |
| Cost of each drive: | SEK |
|
The number of working hours spent each year:
(system administration and support) | h/year |
| The cost of a working hour: | SEK/h |
|
The part of the raw storage that is usable:
(RAID6 (two parity drives) on five drives equals 0.6.) | usable storage factor |
Purchase cost SEK.
Raw storage TB.
Usable storage TB.
Yearly cost SEK/year over years (includes everything)
Cost for raw disk SEK/TB/year.
Cost for usable storage SEK/TB/year.
Two identical file servers (one for backup using snapshots / shadow copy) would cost SEK/TB/year
Two servers (as above) and a cold standy (no drives) would cost SEK/TB/year